Xperia Phone Warning / LineageOS

Digital Safety
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I was in bad need of updating my prior Nexus Phone, as it’s battery was going bad for the second time, and getting it’s battery replaced was something of a chore.

I settled on a Xperia XA2 Ultra off of ebay, thinking it would be a good match for me. Having both good battery life, a headphone jack and being well supported by LineageOS and SailfishOS if I ever got mobile OS wanderlust.

It is not mentioned anywhere in the LineageOS device wiki, but allowing the device phone to upgrade to Android Pie, will make it incompatible with all existing Lineage OS builds (and Sailfish OS builds for that matter).

Confusingly it’s highly encouraged to update your phone to the update just prior to the Android Pie update, before installing LineageOS.

Your phone will bootloop/brick if you attempt to downgrade Android or switch to LineageOS or SailfishOS once on Android Pie.

I find myself a bit trapped on this phone in Android Pie. I disabled as much of google as I easily could, hoping LineageOS would produce a solution within a few weeks but this is seeming less likely as time goes on.

Im shopping for a new ebay phone soon. I will be avoiding Xperia phones in the future and reading the FULL official LineageOS thread for the phone on XDA before buying a phone in the future.

A little irritated these kinds of problems are not telegraphed in the LineageOS Wiki or Device Status page.

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Was able to downgrade safely using the official Sony Flash Tool “Emma” distributed as part of their Open Devices program. Borrowed a windows laptop from work to do it. Utility here: Download Flash tool - Open Devices - Sony Developer World

This wasn’t really documented on XDA. Most of them are using the community Xperia Flash tool, but lots of users reporting bricks from it when downgrading.

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Glad you were able to downgrade.

Clarke’s third law seems applicable. Specifically, science is reproducible, which seems more and more nostalgic as I type.

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Yeah I really wanted to give it a go downgrading it, but I wanted to wait and do it when I could be ready to spend money on another phone if I had to; in case I bricked it.

Once I remembered the Emma Tool from other shenanigans a few years ago; I figured it might be a safer bet. It is in theory what Sony would be using to downgrade the thing if it came up on their end.

I booted up SailfishOS for a few hours on it just to see how the latest version of that thing was looking like this days, and then switched it over to LineageOS.

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